Social Issues

Virtually no liberals have read the Hobby Lobby decision or have any idea what the Supreme Court actually ruled, but that hasn’t prevented them from making fools of themselves. Since the Court issued its ruling yesterday morning, it has been wall-to-wall hysteria on the Left. This video montage, compiled at Grabien, is an entertaining look at the Left’s response to Hobby Lobby. Get out the popcorn: MSNBC was hardly any »

The hearing of the Hobby Lobby case by the Supreme Court this week inspired Kevin Williamson to meditate on the deeper currents running through it. Williamson’s NRO column is “The right not to be implicated” and I commend it to your attention. Williamson notes the dramatic revision of public orthodoxy that moves us “from forbidden to compulsory in record time, and vice versa.” He invites us to consider the case »

New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade bills itself as the oldest and largest such event in the world–indeed, it predates the American Revolution. The parade is sponsored privately, by the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The parade draws around 200,000 participants and one to two million spectators every year, and has always been a festive occasion. This year, however, news coverage of the parade has been dominated by the gay »

I’m afraid this may become a daily occurrence. Today’s kerfuffle involves Mike Huckabee, who gave a talk to the National Republican Committee in which he criticized Democrats for treating women like idiots. This is the relevant excerpt: I think it’s time for Republicans to no longer accept listening to Democrats talk about a war on women. Because the fact is, the Republicans don’t have a war on women. They have »

And I don’t mean that in a good way. Today the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out one of its notorious fundraising emails, with the subject heading “Vote Alert.” John — On this 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the fight over women’s health care rights is far from over. With rare exceptions, when a mother’s health actually is threatened by pregnancy, abortion cannot properly be described as health care. »

House Republicans are advancing legislation to prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions. H.R. 7 currently has at least 164 sponsors; you can read the text of the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act” here. As legislation goes, it isn’t particularly controversial, as polls consistently show that most Americans (in this CNN poll, 61%) oppose public funding of abortions. But that doesn’t stop the Democratic Party from twisting the act beyond recognition »

Rasmussen Reports says we are: Fewer voters now identify themselves as “socially liberal” than they have in the past. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of Likely U.S. Voters now consider themselves liberal on social issues such as abortion, public prayer and church-state topics. That’s the lowest number of self-identified social liberals since early last year. Just as many (30%) consider themselves moderate on such »

In Lawrence v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court, reversing its own then-recent holding in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruled that laws against homosexual sodomy are unconstitutional–even though the Constitution says nothing about sex, let alone sodomy–on the ground that the right of privacy (also never mentioned in the Constitution) protects all consensual, private sexual contact between adults. Lawrence immediately was seen as a milestone in the campaign for gay marriage. Some »

In response to my post below called Education, Immigration, and Diversity, one of my favorite readers writes: You hit a bunch of nails squarely on the head, most of which are routinely overlooked or disallowed from the discussion. As you know, economic and political questions are often, at root, moral and behavioral in nature. A foundational premise of economics is that “Money is like fertilizer: whatever you throw resources at, »

Nicholas Frankovich at NRO writes: Bradley Manning wants to change his sex, and the bien-pensants of the Left honor his decision, changing the gender of the pronouns they use to refer to him. Meanwhile, John Doe wants to change his sexual orientation, but that’s different: They rush to save him from the horror of his self-hatred and psychological self-punishment, as they see it. Hence the bill that Governor Chris Christie »

The most glamorous member of my extended family is probably Lakey Peterson, who at age 18 is one of the most famous surfers in the world. Starting at age 16 or 17, she has toured the globe, sponsored by Nike, competing on the international surfing circuit. Lakey’s mother Susan is a Hinderaker; she was an all-America swimmer at USC. So Lakey is my kids’ third cousin. Tonight we watched an »

Most of us read a newspaper’s sports pages for a respite from the generally depressing news of the day, and there was once a time when we could even expect a conservative outlook from most sports reporters. But those days are long gone. For some reason, today’s sportswriters are, if anything, farther to the left than their brethren in the news room. Moreover, some of the most obnoxious, far-left news »

Today the Minnesota Senate passed a bill authorizing gay marriage which will be signed into law by our governor, Mark Dayton. That is the context for this text, which my oldest daughter sent me a few minutes ago: If I had a dollar for every #time4marriage hashtag on my feed I’d be rich. Someone should start a #time4jobs trend, seeing as there are approx. twice as many unemployed Americans as »

Jennifer Rubin argues that Ronald Reagan’s mythical status “has become a burden for the modern GOP.” “The old guard,” she says, “has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.” As a result, Republicans have lost their ability to connect with average Americans at an emotional level. Rubin is sore that, for the »

So this is another of my occasional highly idiosyncratic posts, like previous ones on Progressive Rock, that is difficult to categorize and present. I’ve been talking lately with one of my moderate liberal friends, David Ropeik. He doesn’t like it when I call him a liberal because he is not a partisan, but I don’t mean it as a pejorative, insult or provocation. He would surely seem a liberal to »

John’s post on social issues, “Where Do Republicans Go From Here? The Social Issues” appears to be receiving plenty of attention, and deservedly so. Here is the prescription with which John concludes the post: 1) Don’t emphasize abortion, but don’t walk away from the issue, either, when issues legitimately arise, as with respect to public funding. When pressed on the subject, don’t be defensive, but respond by pointing out the »

Do Democrats engage in soul-searching after they lose an election? Maybe I miss it because I’m not a Democrat, but it doesn’t seem that they do. After John Kerry lost in 2004, did Democrats agonize over whether they should stop opposing the war in Iraq, or become pro-abortion? When Democrats were “shellacked,” as President Obama put it, in 2010, did they debate whether they should come up with a coherent »